Tuesday, May 22, 2007

GREAT BENCHMARKS

It is billed as ‘The Revenge Series’. The Indian team won the one-day series by winning two matches of three. One match was washed out.

Dhoni who received a lot of flak after the failure in the World Cup came good in the first match and he won the Man of the Series award. Gautam Gambhir scored a ton in the series to justify his selection in place of Sehwag. The bowlers too, took wickets.

The first test match ended in a draw with almost three days of play lost due to rain. Sachin and Saurav scored 100s to add to their career tally. Hard as they tried, the Indians could not enforce the follow-on and let the home team escape from the jail.

Predictably, the media has gone to town about the revival of the team. It is quite a revival with the success coming against a team whose status was, till recently, not up to the international level!

In the recently concluded Sultan Azlan Shah hockey tournament, India secured the third position. The hockey team also witnessed changes both at the level of the coach and the players. It was indeed an achievement that the Indian team could reach the last four of an international tournament after a while. Pleased with this success, the ruling body of hockey in the country announced a cash reward of Rs.50,000 each to the players. Suddenly, Indian hockey is in a revival mode, despite the Union Sports Ministry removing the sport from the priority list.

There are some interesting parallels that I wish to draw from the world of politics. The BJP put up a dismal show in the state of Uttar Pradesh. But the leaders of the party are confident of doing well in the general elections of 2009. It appears, that they are afraid of the anti-incumbency factor. Similar is the case with the political party of India-the Congress. The top leadership of this party also wants us to wait till 2009. Interestingly, both the national parties talked a lot about their revival before and during the elections.

Looks like the entire country is in a revival mode. The new benchmarks are really great!

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